Understanding BOP Compassionate Release Criteria: A Comprehensive Guide to Federal Early Release Options

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

What is compassionate release, and who may qualify?

Compassionate release is a court order under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A) reducing a federal sentence when “extraordinary and compelling reasons” warrant it. Terminal illness, serious medical decline, advanced age with deteriorating health, and the loss of a family caregiver are the recognized grounds. The sentencing judge decides — not the warden, not a parole board.

Key takeaways on federal early release routes

• Eleven routes exist, and only four are motions you can put in front of a judge yourself. Compassionate release, a retroactive guideline reduction, § 2255 or direct appeal, and early termination of supervised release. A fifth, Rule 35(b), reaches a judge only on the government’s motion. Earned time credits, good conduct time, RDAP, prerelease custody, and the elderly home-detention pilot are administrative decisions made inside the Bureau of Prisons and the Justice Department. Clemency belongs to the President alone.
• The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and the federal sentencing court apply different compassionate release criteria to the same facts. BOP’s Program Statement 5050.51 (Sept. 3, 2026) now tracks the guideline’s medical and age categories but has no caregiver category at all, while the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines policy statement at USSG § 1B1.13 — what a judge actually applies — still lists four family-circumstances grounds. A BOP denial says almost nothing about how a court will rule.
• Defendant-filed motions are the whole compassionate release system now. In fiscal year 2025, 369 of the 394 granted motions — 93.7% — were filed by the defendant, and 16 by the BOP Director (USSC FY2025 Compassionate Release Data Report, Table 5).
• A retroactive guideline reduction is currently granted more than twice as often as compassionate release, when it is available at all: 34.3% for Part A of Amendment 821 and 30.4% for Part B, against a 14.1% compassionate release grant rate in FY2025. It is also much smaller — a mean cut of 12 to 15 months, not release.
• Two Supreme Court decisions on May 28, 2026 closed the two most common arguments. A sentence made longer by a law Congress later changed but did not make retroactive is no longer a qualifying reason (Rutherford), and a claim that the conviction was wrong belongs in a § 2255 motion, not here (Fernandez).
• Where the case was prosecuted matters more than most families realize. In FY2025 the Ninth Circuit granted 31.0% of compassionate release motions and the Eighth Circuit granted 4.9% (USSC FY2025 Data Report, Table 3).

Every Route Out of Federal Custody Early: Who Decides What

Eleven mechanisms can shorten federal custody or change where it is served. They come from different statutes and answer to different decision-makers, and confusing them costs families months. The table below is the map; each route gets its own section below, and each links to the page on this site that covers it in depth. Before working through the routes, it is worth ruling out the ones that are closed: see who is not eligible for compassionate release.

Route	Who decides	Core requirement	What it actually changes
Compassionate release, 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)	The federal sentencing judge	Extraordinary and compelling reasons; not a danger under § 3142(g); § 3553(a) factors support it	Reduces the sentence itself, frequently to time served
Retroactive guideline amendment, 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2)	The federal sentencing judge	A Commission amendment listed as retroactive at USSG § 1B1.10(d) that lowers your range	Reduces the sentence within the new range — mean cut of 12 to 15 months
Rule 35(b) substantial assistance, Fed. R. Crim. P. 35(b)	The judge, but only on the government’s motion	Substantial assistance provided after sentencing	Reduces the sentence; you cannot initiate it
First Step Act earned time credits, 18 U.S.C. § 3632(d)(4)	The Bureau of Prisons	Program participation, an eligible offense, and a PATTERN risk level	Moves the release date into prerelease custody or up to 12 months of early supervised release
Good conduct time, 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b)	The Bureau of Prisons	Exemplary compliance with disciplinary rules	Up to 54 days per year of the sentence imposed
RDAP early release, 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e)	The Bureau of Prisons, in its discretion	A verified substance abuse problem, a nonviolent offense, completion of the program	Up to 12 months off the term
Prerelease custody — RRC and home confinement, 18 U.S.C. § 3624(c)	The Bureau of Prisons	Placement discretion in the final months of the term	Up to 12 months in a halfway house; home confinement for the shorter of 10% of the term or 6 months
Elderly Offender Home Detention pilot, 34 U.S.C. § 60541(g)	The Attorney General, through the BOP	Age 60 or older, two-thirds of the term served, a qualifying non-violent record, and five further findings	Home detention for the rest of the term; the sentence is unchanged
Commutation of sentence (clemency), 28 C.F.R. part 1	The President	A petition through the Office of the Pardon Attorney; no other judicial or administrative relief available	Shortens or ends the sentence; the conviction stands
§ 2255 motion or direct appeal, 28 U.S.C. § 2255	The sentencing court; the court of appeals	A constitutional or jurisdictional defect; or preserved legal error	Vacates or corrects the conviction or sentence — after Fernandez, the only route for a validity challenge
Early termination of supervised release, 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(1)	The sentencing judge	One year of supervised release completed; conduct and the interest of justice warrant it	Ends supervision early; does not affect the prison term

Two general observations before the detail. First, the BOP-decided routes stack; the court-decided routes generally do not. A person can earn good conduct time, earn First Step Act credits, complete RDAP, and still be placed in a halfway house — those are cumulative. A compassionate release grant, by contrast, ends the analysis. Second, the routes that move the release date furthest are the hardest to get, and the routes that are easiest to get move it least. That trade-off is the whole strategic question, and it is what the sections below are built to let you answer.

If the person you are trying to help is not in federal custody, none of these statutes apply. Every provision on this page governs a sentence imposed by a United States district court and served in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. County and state systems run on their own rules, which vary by state and are frequently far narrower — see compassionate release from county jail.

How Do BOP Compassionate Release Criteria Differ From What a Judge Applies?

They differ substantially, and the gap is the single most useful thing to understand before filing anything. The Bureau of Prisons uses Program Statement 5050.51 (Sept. 3, 2026) to decide one narrow question: whether the Director will ask a court to reduce a sentence. A federal judge deciding a defendant-filed motion applies USSG § 1B1.13 instead. PS 5050.51 no longer states PS 5050.50’s 18-month terminal prognosis or its 50% and 75% time-served rules, and its medical and age categories now track the guideline’s wording. But it eliminated every caregiver category, so the family-circumstances grounds in § 1B1.13(b)(3) now exist only in court. And the guideline has no counterpart to the pre-2018 requirement, still printed in 28 C.F.R. § 571.61(a), that the circumstances “could not reasonably have been foreseen by the court at the time of sentencing” — USSG § 1B1.13(e) expressly says a reason “need not have been unforeseen at the time of sentencing.”

That divergence has a practical consequence almost no page states: a warden’s denial is weak evidence about how a judge will rule, because the warden was applying a different test. The BOP-side criteria still matter — they tell you exactly what to put in the request, and they are the standard the institution will use — but they are not the law of the motion.

The two standards side by side

Category	BOP screening criterion (PS 5050.51, Sept. 3, 2026) — governs whether the Director files	Court standard (USSG § 1B1.13) — governs a defendant-filed motion	Where they diverge	Times cited in FY2025 grants
Terminal illness	Terminal, incurable disease — “a serious and advanced illness with an end-of-life trajectory” — as determined under BOP’s internal Clinical Guidance; BOP assesses prognosis, survival rate, comorbidities, and functional impairment (§ 4.a)	“A serious and advanced illness with an end-of-life trajectory.” A specific prognosis “is not required.” Examples named: metastatic solid-tumor cancer, ALS, end-stage organ disease, advanced dementia	The wording now matches. The difference is who decides: BOP applies its internal Clinical Guidance; the court reads the medical record itself	28
Debilitated condition	A serious physical or medical condition, or a serious functional or cognitive impairment, from which recovery is not expected and which substantially diminishes the ability to provide self-care in the correctional environment, under BOP’s Clinical Guidance (§ 4.b)	A serious physical, medical, functional, or cognitive condition, or aging-related decline, that “substantially diminishes the ability… to provide self-care within the environment of a correctional facility” and from which recovery is not expected	Near-identical wording since PS 5050.51. The guideline also counts aging-related decline at any age; BOP treats aging only in its age-based categories	71
Care not being provided	Other extraordinary medical circumstances: a condition needing long-term or specialized care that cannot be provided in the Bureau “without undue hardship, prohibitive costs, or significant disruption to the safe and orderly running of the institution,” and without which the person risks serious deterioration or death (§ 4.e)	A condition requiring long-term or specialized care “that is not being provided and without which the defendant is at risk of serious deterioration in health or death” — § 1B1.13(b)(1)(C)	BOP now has a parallel category, but frames it around what the Bureau can provide without undue hardship or cost; the guideline asks only whether the care “is not being provided”	12
Outbreak or public health emergency	Facility affected or at imminent risk from an ongoing, extraordinary infectious-disease outbreak or a declared public health emergency, risk that cannot be mitigated in a timely or adequate manner, and a Clinical Director finding of increased personal risk (§ 4.d)	Facility affected by an ongoing infectious-disease outbreak or declared emergency, plus personal risk factors, plus risk that cannot be mitigated in time — all three, § 1B1.13(b)(1)(D)	Both sides now require all three elements; BOP adds that its Clinical Director must make the personal-risk finding	3
Elderly with medical conditions	Age 65+, serious deterioration in physical or mental health because of the aging process, and the lesser of 10 years or 75% of the term served (§ 4.c)	Age 65+, serious deterioration from aging, and at least 10 years or 75% of the term, whichever is less — § 1B1.13(b)(2)	None on paper since PS 5050.51 adopted the guideline’s thresholds. BOP measures the deterioration under its Clinical Guidance	16
“Other elderly”	Eliminated by PS 5050.51 (Summary of Changes). PS 5050.50 had allowed age 65+ with the greater of 10 years or 75% of the term served	No counterpart. The guideline has one age category, and it requires deteriorating health	Below age 70, BOP no longer considers age alone; the guideline never did	No coded category
“New law” elderly	Age 70+ with 30 years or more served (§ 5; a parallel “old law” criterion covers offenses before November 1, 1987)	Age 70+, 30 years served pursuant to a sentence imposed under 18 U.S.C. § 3559(c), plus a BOP Director determination of non-dangerousness — § 3582(c)(1)(A)(ii)	The statute requires a three-strikes sentence and a Director finding; BOP’s internal criterion requires neither. Almost nobody satisfies the statute	No coded category; “fails § 3559 age/time-served” was cited 120 times as a denial reason
Caregiver of a minor child dies or is incapacitated	No category. PS 5050.51 eliminated the child-caregiver criteria; PS 5050.50 had covered only a biological or legally adopted child under 18	Death or incapacitation of the caregiver of the defendant’s minor child or of an adult child incapable of self-care because of disability or medical condition — § 1B1.13(b)(3)(A)	Court-only since September 3, 2026. The guideline also covers a disabled adult child	18
Spouse or registered partner incapacitated	No category. PS 5050.51 eliminated the spouse and registered-partner caregiver criteria; PS 5050.50 had required near-total disability or a severe cognitive deficit and a relationship formed before arrest	Incapacitation of a spouse or registered partner where the defendant would be the only available caregiver — § 1B1.13(b)(3)(B)	Court-only since September 3, 2026. The guideline requires neither near-total disability nor a pre-arrest relationship	2
Parent incapacitated	No counterpart category in PS 5050.51 (or in PS 5050.50)	Incapacitation of the defendant’s parent where the defendant would be the only available caregiver — § 1B1.13(b)(3)(C)	Court-only — and in FY2025 it was the most-cited family ground	23
Other immediate family member	No counterpart category in PS 5050.51 (or in PS 5050.50)	Same circumstances as to any other immediate family member — expressly including a grandchild, grandparent, or sibling — or someone whose relationship is similar in kind, § 1B1.13(b)(3)(D)	Court-only	14
Victim of abuse in custody	Sexual abuse involving a “sexual act” under 18 U.S.C. § 2246(2), or physical abuse resulting in serious bodily injury, committed by or at the direction of a Bureau employee, contractor, or volunteer while the person was in custody for the current offense, and substantiated by a conviction, an administrative finding, or a civil finding or admission (§§ 6–7)	Sexual abuse involving a “sexual act” under 18 U.S.C. § 2246(2), or physical abuse causing serious bodily injury, by staff or anyone with custody or control; ordinarily proved by criminal conviction, civil finding or admission, or administrative finding — § 1B1.13(b)(4)	BOP now has parallel categories, limited to Bureau employees, contractors, and volunteers and requiring a completed finding; the guideline also reaches anyone with custody or control and excuses the finding where proceedings are unduly delayed or the defendant is in imminent danger. Untouched by Rutherford (footnote 3)	5
Other reasons (catch-all)	No catch-all category. The § 9 factors, which are “neither exclusive nor weighted,” apply to every request: offense, criminal history, victim comments, detainers, supervised release violations, institutional adjustment, discipline, PSR history, sentence length and time served, age and health now and at sentencing, release plans, the sentencing court’s statements, and whether release would minimize the severity of the offense	Any other circumstance, alone or combined with the above, “similar in gravity” to the listed categories — § 1B1.13(b)(5)	Narrowed since Hall (6th Cir. 2026): the catch-all cannot be used to reach a ground a statute forecloses	No coded category; 9 grants cited an unspecified extraordinary and compelling reason
Unusually long sentence	No counterpart category in PS 5050.51	Still printed at § 1B1.13(b)(6) — and invalid to the extent it treats a nonretroactive change in law as a qualifying reason, per Rutherford (2026)	The Manual and the Supreme Court now disagree on the page	80 (before Rutherford)
Rehabilitation	Institutional adjustment and discipline are § 9 factors in PS 5050.51	Never sufficient by itself — 28 U.S.C. § 994(t) — but weighed in combination under § 1B1.13(d)	Same rule on both sides	95, always with another ground

Counts in the last column are from the USSC FY2025 Compassionate Release Data Report, Table 10 — 631 reasons cited across 394 granted motions, because courts may cite more than one. The one denial-reason figure is drawn from Table 11 of the same report and is labeled as such in the cell.

The application path, from BOP request to federal court filing

Step	Who acts	What the rule requires	Timing	Source
1. Written request to the warden	The person in custody, or an attorney, partner, or family member on their behalf	Must state the extraordinary or compelling circumstances and proposed release plans: where the person will live, how they will support themselves, and for health-based requests where treatment will be delivered and how it will be paid for	Considered “submitted” when received by the warden — for a person in a Residential Reentry Center or on home confinement, the Residential Reentry Manager (PS 5050.51 § 3)	28 C.F.R. § 571.61(a)
2. Terminal-diagnosis duties	The Bureau of Prisons	Notify the attorney, partner, and family within 72 hours of a terminal diagnosis; provide in-person visitation within 7 days; assist in drafting on request; process the request within 14 days	Clock starts when the Clinical Director makes the diagnosis	18 U.S.C. § 3582(d)(2)(A)
3. Institution-level review	The warden (the Residential Reentry Manager for a person in a Residential Reentry Center or on home confinement)	Investigate, gather documentation, recommend approval or denial	No regulation sets a deadline for the warden’s decision	28 C.F.R. § 571.62(a)(1)
4. Referral to Central Office	The warden, if approving	Referral packet: written recommendation, Judgment and Commitment Order, sentence computation, a progress report not more than 30 days old, all pertinent medical records including a Comprehensive Medical Summary with an estimate of life expectancy, the PSR, victim-notification confirmation, and U.S. Probation-approved release plans	Warden forwards within 14 days in terminal cases; in other cases the warden should wait at least 30 days after sending victim notifications before referring	PS 5050.51 §§ 4.a, 10
5. General Counsel and specialist review	Office of General Counsel, then the Medical Director (medical) or Assistant Director, Correctional Programs Division (non-medical)	Both must review before the file reaches the Director. Medical-basis requests are expedited “at all levels”	No deadline set by regulation	28 C.F.R. § 571.62(a)(2), (c)
6. Director’s decision	The Director, Bureau of Prisons	If granted, the Director contacts the U.S. Attorney in the sentencing district to move the court	A Director’s denial must issue within 20 workdays of receipt from General Counsel	28 C.F.R. § 571.63(c)
7. Appealing a denial	The person in custody	Only a warden’s denial is appealable, through the administrative remedy procedure — informal resolution (commonly called the BP-8), then BP-9 within 20 calendar days, BP-10 within 20 days, BP-11 within 30 days. A General Counsel or Director denial is a final administrative decision and is not appealable	Agency response times run 20 / 30 / 40 days; no response counts as a denial	28 C.F.R. § 571.63; § 542.14; § 542.15; § 542.18
8. The 30-day route	The person in custody	File in the sentencing court after full exhaustion of BOP appeals or the lapse of 30 days from the warden’s receipt, whichever is earlier	Day 31 is the earliest filing date on this route	18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A)
9. Motion in the sentencing court	The defendant, through counsel or pro se	Must establish extraordinary and compelling reasons, non-dangerousness under § 3142(g), and that the § 3553(a) factors support release	No statutory deadline for the court to rule; realistically months	USSG § 1B1.13(a)
10. If granted	The warden	“Shall release the inmate forthwith” once the amended judgment issues	Days, once Records processes the amended judgment	28 C.F.R. § 571.62(b)

One category is excluded outright from the BOP side: the Bureau “has no authority to initiate a request” for state prisoners housed in federal facilities, D.C. Code offenders in federal institutions, or pre-November 1, 1987 offenders with non-parolable sentences (28 C.F.R. § 571.64). D.C. Code offenders now have their own route: PS 5050.51 processes their requests under D.C. Code § 24-403.04, which lets the Bureau of Prisons or the prisoner, among others, move for a reduction (§§ 8, 12). A person who already received a reduction, was released, and returned to BOP custody is not eligible for BOP consideration at all (§ 3). Confirm which statute governs the sentence before spending a month on paperwork.

The warden-request mechanics, including what a denial does and does not open up, are covered in full on our page about the compassionate release request to warden. For worked illustrations of what qualifies, see compassionate release examples.

Applied Insight — Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, Managing Director: Write the request to the warden as though it were the motion, because in practice it becomes one. Two things get requests rejected at the institution before anyone reads the medical argument: no release plan, and no authorization for the BOP to obtain records. Section 571.61(a)(2) makes the release plan a required element, and PS 5050.50 asked for written authorization for BOP to obtain documents from any doctor, medical entity, or government agency; PS 5050.51 no longer spells that out, but the authorization still lets staff verify the request. A request that names the address, the person who owns it, the receiving physician, the insurance, and the transportation reads as a plan. A request that says the family will help reads as a wish. The same document then attaches to the court motion 31 days later, which is the real reason to build it properly the first time.

What Changed on May 28, 2026, and Which Route Your Case Now Needs

On May 28, 2026 the Supreme Court decided two compassionate release cases and narrowed the statute in both. If the theory of your case was the length of the sentence, that theory now needs a different vehicle — and knowing that immediately is worth more than any other single fact on this page. Our page on rutherford v united states works through both opinions and the reservations in them.

Rutherford v. United States, decided with Carter v. United States, held that a sentencing disparity created by a change Congress chose not to make retroactive cannot be an extraordinary and compelling reason. The two petitioners were serving stacked 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) sentences under a regime the First Step Act later abolished prospectively. The Court held the nonretroactive change, “considered by itself or in combination with other factors—cannot make a prisoner eligible for compassionate release. To the extent that it counsels otherwise, the Commission’s policy statement is invalid” (slip op. at 16). That last clause targets § 1B1.13(b)(6), which was the second most-cited reason for granting relief in FY2025 with 80 citations. It is still printed in the Manual. If the theory rested on § 1B1.13(b)(6), start with our page on the unusually long sentence ground.

Fernandez v. United States closed a second door: “A prisoner who collaterally attacks the validity of his conviction must proceed through 28 U.S.C. § 2255, not 18 U.S.C. § 3582.” The line the Court drew is between what happened at trial and what is happening now: “When a prisoner moves for compassionate release based on a terminal illness, his motion does not suggest that his conviction is invalid. But if a prisoner moves for relief because of alleged problems with the underlying criminal investigation or trial, his motion suggests that his conviction is flawed” (slip op. at 14–15).

What the Court expressly did not decide

Two reservations matter, and most commentary has missed them. The Court said: “We need not decide whether there are reasons beyond personal circumstances that could qualify as ‘extraordinary and compelling'” (Rutherford, slip op. at 10–11), and “We need not nail down the precise boundaries of the phrase ‘extraordinary and compelling'” (slip op. at 16). Age, illness, and family circumstances are the heartland the Court described. They are not a closed list, and anyone telling you the statute is now limited to those three things is reading more into the opinion than it says. Rutherford footnote 3 also states that the 2023 amendment’s victim-of-abuse provision “is not at issue in today’s cases” — § 1B1.13(b)(4) survives intact, which matters greatly to people harmed in custody. See victims of sexual abuse lawyer.

Lower courts have read Rutherford broadly since. In United States v. Hall, No. 24-6094 (6th Cir. June 25, 2026), a published decision reversing a grant, the Sixth Circuit held that the reasoning is not confined to § 1B1.13(b)(6) — the (b)(5) catch-all cannot be used to override a limit either. In United States v. Chineag, No. 25-10557 (11th Cir. July 2, 2026) (unpublished), the Eleventh Circuit applied it to a nonretroactive Controlled Substances Act change. In United States v. Loggins, Nos. 24-1488 and 24-1569 (8th Cir. July 10, 2026), the Eighth Circuit read it as confirming its own prior rule.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: The counseling consequence of May 28, 2026 is a redirect, not a dead end. For three years, a great many filings led with the length of the sentence and treated the client’s health as supporting detail. If that describes a case, the honest options now are different ones: a retroactive guideline reduction under § 3582(c)(2) if an amendment on the § 1B1.10(d) list actually lowers the range; a § 2255 motion if the problem is the conviction or the sentence’s legality; or a commutation petition, which is the only mechanism that was ever designed to fix a sentence Congress declined to fix. What has not changed is § 1B1.13(c): once eligibility is established on medical, age, or family grounds, a change in the law may still inform how large a reduction the court gives. The argument moved from step one to step two. It did not disappear.

Retroactive Guideline Amendments: 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2)

This is the most overlooked route on the list, and right now it has the best odds of the court-decided options. Section 3582(c)(2) lets the sentencing court reduce a term when the guideline range that produced it “has subsequently been lowered by the Sentencing Commission” and the Commission has made that amendment retroactive. It works on a motion by the defendant, by the BOP Director, or on the court’s own motion.

The gate is USSG § 1B1.10. Only the amendments listed in § 1B1.10(d) count, and the amendment must actually lower your applicable range. The most recent additions are Amendment 821, Parts A and B, subpart 1 — Part A limits “status points” for offenses committed while under a criminal justice sentence, and Part B, subpart 1 created § 4C1.1, a two-level reduction for defendants with zero criminal history points. Both became retroactive for orders effective February 1, 2024 or later. Three critical limits: the proceeding “do[es] not constitute a full resentencing,” the court generally cannot go below the minimum of the amended range, and “[i]n no event may the reduced term of imprisonment be less than the term of imprisonment the defendant has already served.”

The Commission’s own data, current through March 31, 2026, shows what this route actually delivers. For Part A, courts decided 17,218 motions and granted 5,901 — a 34.3% grant rate; the mean sentence fell from 116 months to 104, a decrease of 12 months (11.6%). For Part B, courts decided 13,451 motions and granted 4,094 — 30.4%; the mean sentence fell from 92 months to 77, a decrease of 15 months (16.9%) (Part A Retroactivity Data Report and Part B Retroactivity Data Report, April 2026, Tables 1 and 8).

Read those two numbers together and the strategic point is obvious: this route is granted roughly twice as often as compassionate release and delivers roughly a year, not release. Denials are also mostly mechanical rather than discretionary — for Part A, 46.1% of denial reasons were ineligibility under § 1B1.10 and another 23.6% were that the person never received status points, while only 11.0% cited the § 3553(a) factors (Part A report, Table 9). That is the opposite profile from compassionate release, where § 3553(a) is the leading cause of denial. Eligibility here is arithmetic; you can usually determine it from the Statement of Reasons and the PSR before anyone files. For the wider set of court-based reduction mechanisms, including the Rule 35 motion, see federal sentence reduction.

First Step Act Earned Time Credits and the PATTERN Risk Assessment

These credits are the largest source of federal early release by volume, and they are decided entirely inside the Bureau of Prisons. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3632(d)(4)(A), a prisoner earns 10 days of time credits for every 30 days of successful participation in evidence-based recidivism reduction programming or productive activities, and an additional 5 days per 30 if the BOP has determined the person to be at minimum or low risk and that risk has not increased over two consecutive assessments. The implementing regulation states the same rates at 28 C.F.R. § 523.42(c). No credit accrues for programming completed before December 21, 2018, or during detention before the sentence commences.

Two structures decide whether the credits are worth anything. The first is the disqualifying-offense list at § 3632(d)(4)(D), which runs from clause (i) to clause (lxviii) — 68 categories covering, among much else, § 924(c) firearms convictions, most of chapter 51 (homicide), all of chapter 55 (kidnapping), chapter 109A (sexual abuse), child exploitation offenses, terrorism, and specified high-level drug offenses where the defendant was an organizer or leader. If the conviction of record is on that list, the person can participate in programming and receive other incentives but earns no time credits at all. Separately, § 3632(d)(4)(E) makes a person subject to a final order of removal ineligible to apply credits, a bar repeated at 28 C.F.R. § 523.44(a)(2).

The second structure is PATTERN, the Prisoner Assessment Tool Targeting Estimated Risk and Needs, which the BOP is now running at version 1.3. It sorts people into four levels — minimum, low, medium, and high — using separate general and violent scales for men and women. The Bureau publishes the numeric cut points: on the male general scale, minimum is 5 points or less, low is 6 to 39, medium is 40 to 54, and high is 55 or more; on the female general scale the same four bands are 7 or less, 8 to 38, 39 to 52, and 53 or more. The level is not cosmetic: earning the bonus 5 days requires minimum or low risk, and applying credits toward prerelease custody requires minimum or low risk on the last two assessments, or a warden’s petition finding the person is not a danger, has made a good faith effort to reduce risk, and is unlikely to recidivate (28 C.F.R. § 523.44(c)). Credits applied toward an early transfer to supervised release are capped at 12 months (18 U.S.C. § 3624(g)(3)). Everything beyond that 12 months moves the person into home confinement or a residential reentry center instead — and a person placed in home confinement under this provision stays there until at least 85% of the imposed term has been served (§ 3624(g)(2)(A)(iv)). For the calculation itself and for fixing a miscomputed credit balance, see First Step Act time credits and the broader First Step Act overview.

RDAP: Up to 12 Months Off Under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e)

RDAP is the Residential Drug Abuse Program, and completing it can take up to a year off a federal sentence. The authority is 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e)(2)(B): “The period a prisoner convicted of a nonviolent offense remains in custody after successfully completing a treatment program may be reduced by the Bureau of Prisons, but such reduction may not be more than one year from the term the prisoner must otherwise serve.” Two words in that sentence do a lot of work. “May” means the reduction is discretionary — completing RDAP creates no entitlement. “Nonviolent” is the statutory gate, and the BOP has drawn that line by regulation rather than case by case.

The statute defines the program itself: residential substance abuse treatment is “a course of individual and group activities and treatment, lasting at least 6 months, in residential treatment facilities set apart from the general prison population,” and an eligible prisoner is one “determined by the Bureau of Prisons to have a substance abuse problem” and “willing to participate” (§ 3621(e)(5)). The documented history of substance use matters enormously here, and the place it is usually documented is the presentence report — which is one reason substance abuse history belongs in the PSR at sentencing rather than being raised for the first time years later.

The exclusions are at 28 C.F.R. § 550.55(b), and they are broader than the statute’s word “nonviolent” suggests. Ineligible as an exercise of the Director’s discretion: ICE detainees, pretrial inmates, contractual boarders, anyone with a prior felony or misdemeanor conviction within the ten years before sentencing for homicide, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, arson, kidnapping, or a sexual abuse offense against a minor; anyone with a current felony involving actual, attempted, or threatened force, the carrying or possession of a firearm or other dangerous weapon or explosive, a serious potential risk of force, or sexual abuse of a minor; anyone convicted of attempt, conspiracy, or solicitation as to those offenses; and anyone who has already received a § 3621(e) reduction once. The firearm exclusion is the one that surprises people most often — a two-level guideline enhancement for a weapon in a drug case can be enough to close this route. Our full treatment is at RDAP.

Good Conduct Time: 54 Days a Year Under 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b)

Good conduct time is the quietest and most reliable of the routes, and it is the one most often miscalculated. Section 3624(b)(1) provides that a prisoner serving a term of more than one year, other than a life term, “may receive credit toward the service of the prisoner’s sentence of up to 54 days for each year of the prisoner’s sentence imposed by the court,” subject to a BOP determination that the person “has displayed exemplary compliance with institutional disciplinary regulations” during that year.

The words “sentence imposed by the court” are the First Step Act’s change. The Act “amended 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b) so that federal inmates can earn up to 54 days of good time credit for every year of their imposed sentence rather than for every year of their sentence served,” and the Bureau gives its own worked example: a person “sentenced to 10 years in prison and who earns the maximum good time credits each year will earn 540 days of credit” (BOP, First Step Act Overview). On a long sentence the difference between those two denominators is months.

Four limits are worth knowing. Credit is not automatic — the statute conditions it on exemplary compliance, and the BOP may award less or none for a year in which disciplinary rules were not satisfied. Credit not earned “may not later be granted,” so a bad year cannot be repaired by a good one. Credit vests on the date of release under § 3624(b)(2), which is why a disciplinary finding late in a sentence can still cost time earned years earlier. And the statute directs the BOP to consider whether the person “has earned, or is making satisfactory progress toward earning, a high school diploma or an equivalent degree” — the one place where education is written directly into the sentence computation. Good conduct time stacks with First Step Act credits and RDAP; it is subtracted from the term, and then release occurs at expiration of the remainder under § 3624(a). If the arithmetic on a sentence computation looks wrong, it usually is checkable against the judgment; that review is part of early release from prison planning.

Prerelease Custody: Halfway House and Home Confinement Under § 3624(c)

This route changes where the last part of a sentence is served rather than how long it is. Section 3624(c)(1) directs the BOP, “to the extent practicable,” to ensure that a prisoner spends “a portion of the final months of that term (not to exceed 12 months)” under conditions affording a reasonable opportunity to prepare for reentry, and says those conditions “may include a community correctional facility” — a residential reentry center, in ordinary speech a halfway house. Section 3624(c)(2) is narrower: home confinement under this authority is limited to “the shorter of 10 percent of the term of imprisonment of that prisoner or 6 months,” and the Bureau is directed, to the extent practicable, to place lower-risk and lower-need prisoners on home confinement for the maximum time permitted.

Do the arithmetic on that 10% rule before hoping for it. On a 60-month sentence, 10% is six months, so the 6-month cap controls. On a 24-month sentence, 10% is 2.4 months — about 73 days. The statute’s two limits bind whichever is smaller, and a great many families expect six months of home confinement on a sentence that mathematically cannot produce it.

The more generous path to the same destination is the First Step Act one described above: prerelease custody under § 3624(g), funded by earned time credits, is not subject to the 10%/6-month cap, though home confinement under that provision runs only until 85% of the imposed term has been served. Both are BOP placement decisions, made by the unit team and the Residential Reentry Manager rather than by a court, and § 3624(c)(4) preserves the Director’s separate designation authority under § 3621. Our detailed pages are federal halfway houses, federal home confinement, and home confinement eligibility.

The Elderly Offender Home Detention Pilot, 34 U.S.C. § 60541(g)

This is the provision most often described inaccurately on other sites, usually because they are quoting the pre-2018 version. The First Step Act rewrote the criteria, and the current statutory text sets a lower age and a lower time-served threshold than the numbers still circulating.

Under 34 U.S.C. § 60541(g)(5)(A), an “eligible elderly offender” is a person in BOP custody who is not less than 60 years of age and who is serving a term that is not life imprisonment, based on convictions that include no crime of violence, sex offense, terrorism offense described in 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5)(B), or offense under chapter 37 of title 18 — and who has served two-thirds of the term to which they were sentenced. Five further conditions apply: no prior federal or state conviction for any of those offense categories; no BOP determination of a history of violence or of qualifying sex-offense conduct; no escape or attempted escape from a BOP institution; a BOP determination that home detention will produce “a substantial net reduction of costs to the Federal Government”; and a BOP determination that the person is “at no substantial risk of engaging in criminal conduct or of endangering any person or the public.” Consecutive and concurrent terms are aggregated and treated as a single term for this calculation. “Home detention” for this purpose expressly “includes detention in a nursing home or other residential long-term care facility” — which is why this provision sometimes reaches people whose medical situation falls short of the compassionate release standard. A parallel definition at § 60541(g)(5)(D) covers “eligible terminally ill offenders,” with no age or time-served requirement, where a BOP-approved physician finds the person needs nursing-home-level care or has a terminal diagnosis.

Two cautions. The Attorney General “may release some or all” eligible offenders — the statute is permissive throughout, and a violation of the terms returns the person to a BOP institution. And the statute states that the pilot “shall be carried out during fiscal years 2019 through 2023,” with appropriations authorized for the same years; § 60541 has not been amended since 2018, though BOP’s First Step Act overview still describes the pilot in the present tense. Confirm current BOP practice before building a plan on it. For background on how aging plays out inside the system, see elderly prisoners in the federal Bureau of Prisons, and for the age-based compassionate release arguments that go to a judge, compassionate release for elderly inmates.

Clemency: Commutation and Pardon Through the Office of the Pardon Attorney

Clemency is the only route on this list that does not go to a judge or to the Bureau of Prisons. It goes to the President, through the Department of Justice. The procedures are in 28 C.F.R. part 1: a person seeking executive clemency “by pardon, reprieve, commutation of sentence, or remission of fine shall execute a formal petition,” addressed to the President and submitted to the Pardon Attorney, Department of Justice, Washington, DC 20530. Commutation petition forms “may be obtained from the wardens of federal penal institutions.”

A commutation shortens or ends a sentence; the conviction stands. A pardon forgives the offense, and 28 C.F.R. § 1.2 says no pardon petition should be filed until at least five years after release from confinement, or five years after conviction if no prison sentence was imposed, and generally not while the person is on probation, parole, or supervised release. A pardon is therefore not an early-release mechanism at all — it is a post-sentence remedy, and anyone offered one as a way out of prison is being misled.

The rule that decides sequencing is 28 C.F.R. § 1.3: “No petition for commutation of sentence, including remission of fine, should be filed if other forms of judicial or administrative relief are available, except upon a showing of exceptional circumstances.” Read that alongside Rutherford and the ordering becomes clear. Commutation is the mechanism designed for a sentence that is lawful, final, and no longer just — precisely the category the Supreme Court removed from § 3582(c)(1)(A) in May 2026. But the regulation asks you to exhaust the judicial routes first, or to explain why you have not. Our pages are federal clemency and commutation of sentence.

Direct Appeal and § 2255: The Only Routes to Challenge a Conviction

After Fernandez, this is no longer a strategic preference. It is the rule. A prisoner attacking the validity of a conviction “must proceed through 28 U.S.C. § 2255, not 18 U.S.C. § 3582” (slip op. at 1). Innocence, a suppressed-evidence claim, a bad jury instruction, ineffective assistance of counsel — none of those are extraordinary and compelling reasons, however strong they are on the merits. For how to tell which statute a particular claim belongs under, see compassionate release vs 2255.

Both of these routes carry deadlines that the early-release routes do not. A direct appeal requires a notice of appeal filed in the district court “within 14 days after” entry of the judgment (Fed. R. App. P. 4(b)(1)(A)); the government gets 30 days when it is the appellant. A § 2255 motion is subject to “[a] 1-year period of limitation,” running from the latest of four events: when the judgment became final, when a governmental impediment was removed, when the Supreme Court newly recognized a right and made it retroactive, or when the facts supporting the claim could have been discovered with due diligence (28 U.S.C. § 2255(f)).

That asymmetry drives sequencing more than anything else in this article. A compassionate release motion can be filed at any time and refiled on changed circumstances. A § 2255 motion filed on day 366 is generally gone. If there is any argument that the conviction or the sentence is legally defective, that clock is the first thing to calculate — before spending months on a warden request. Our pages are federal appeals, § 2255 motion, and post-conviction deadlines.

Early Termination of Supervised Release, 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(1)

Most surveys of early-release options stop at the prison gate. That is a mistake, because for a great many people the last several years of the sentence are served on supervision, and those years can be ended early. Section 3583(e)(1) authorizes the court to “terminate a term of supervised release and discharge the defendant released at any time after the expiration of one year of supervised release… if it is satisfied that such action is warranted by the conduct of the defendant released and the interest of justice.”

The elements are short. One year of supervision must have elapsed. The court considers a specified subset of the § 3553(a) factors — subsections (a)(1), (a)(2)(B), (a)(2)(C), (a)(2)(D), (a)(4), (a)(5), (a)(6), and (a)(7). Notably absent from that list is § 3553(a)(2)(A), the need for the sentence to reflect the seriousness of the offense and provide just punishment; Congress left retribution out of the early-termination calculus. And the standard is conduct plus “the interest of justice,” which is a genuinely open-textured phrase — stable employment, completed treatment, restitution being paid, family responsibilities, and a clean supervision record all speak to it.

The same statute gives the court a middle option at § 3583(e)(2): it may “modify, reduce, or enlarge the conditions of supervised release” at any time before the term expires. Where full termination is a reach, dropping location monitoring, a travel restriction, or a treatment condition often is not. This is a motion to the sentencing court, filed through the procedures applicable to modifying probation, and the probation officer’s position on it usually matters a great deal. Early termination of supervised release is within the firm’s practice.

How Often Each Route Actually Works

Numbers beat adjectives, so here are the ones the government publishes. Courts granted 394 of the 2,795 compassionate release motions decided in fiscal year 2025 — a 14.1% grant rate — and through the first half of fiscal year 2026 the rate was essentially unchanged at 14.0% (125 of 894) (USSC FY2025 Compassionate Release Data Report and FY2026 Q2 report, Tables 2–3). For compassionate release specifically, the circuit and district figures are on our page on the compassionate release grant rate.

Route	Grant rate	What the grants delivered	Source
Compassionate release, FY2025	14.1% (394 of 2,795)	Sentence reduction, frequently to time served	USSC FY2025 Compassionate Release Data Report, Tables 2–3
Compassionate release, FY2026 Q1–Q2	14.0% (125 of 894)	Same	USSC FY2026 Q2 Compassionate Release Data Report, Tables 2–3
Amendment 821 Part A (status points), through Mar. 31, 2026	34.3% (5,901 of 17,218)	Mean sentence 116 → 104 months; mean decrease 12 months (11.6%)	USSC Part A Retroactivity Data Report (Apr. 2026), Tables 1 and 8
Amendment 821 Part B (zero-point offenders), through Mar. 31, 2026	30.4% (4,094 of 13,451)	Mean sentence 92 → 77 months; mean decrease 15 months (16.9%)	USSC Part B Retroactivity Data Report (Apr. 2026), Tables 1 and 8

Three things in that table deserve emphasis. The retroactive-amendment route wins twice as often and delivers about a year. Compassionate release wins less often and, when it wins, frequently ends the sentence outright — half the people granted relief in FY2025 were serving sentences of 20 years or more. The denial patterns are completely different. Compassionate release dies at the discretionary step: the § 3553(a) factors were cited 1,260 times in FY2025, nearly a quarter of all denial reasons, and failure to exhaust administrative remedies 447 times (FY2025 report, Table 11). Retroactive-amendment motions die at the eligibility step: for Part B, 57.6% of denial reasons were simple ineligibility under § 4C1.1(b) (Part B report, Table 9). And geography is enormous. In FY2025 the compassionate release grant rate ran from 31.0% in the Ninth Circuit (72 of 232) to 4.9% in the Eighth (26 of 528) — a more than sixfold spread on identical law. Because the motion goes to the sentencing court, that is set by where the case was prosecuted, not by where the person is imprisoned now. For what that looks like in one of the harder circuits, see compassionate release texas application.

One warning about reading the compassionate release numbers forward. Of the 631 reasons courts gave for granting relief in FY2025, 80 cited § 1B1.13(b)(6) and 45 cited multiple § 924(c) penalties (Table 10). Those grants rest on a reading of the statute the Supreme Court rejected in May 2026. Any estimate of the odds built on FY2024 or FY2025 data therefore overstates what is available today, because roughly a fifth of the reasons courts were giving are no longer available reasons.

How to Sequence These Routes

Choosing among eleven options is really four questions, asked in this order.

First: is there a deadline running? If any argument exists that the conviction or sentence is legally defective, calculate the § 2255(f) one-year date and the Rule 4(b) 14-day appeal date before anything else. Compassionate release has no deadline; those do. Nothing else on this list is worth a month if that clock is about to expire.

Second: is eligibility arithmetic or argument? Retroactive guideline eligibility, good conduct time, First Step Act credit eligibility, and the two-thirds calculation for the elderly pilot are all determinable from documents — the judgment, the Statement of Reasons, the PSR, and the sentence computation. Check them first, because they are cheap to check and because a person can pursue them while a compassionate release record is being built.

Third: what does the medical and family record actually document? The compassionate release categories in the table above are not interchangeable, and the strongest ground is frequently not the one the family assumed. A case described as terminal cancer sometimes proves out most strongly under § 1B1.13(b)(1)(C) — care that is not being provided — because what the record documents is a six-month delay in reaching the oncologist rather than a prognosis. Depth on this is at compassionate release medical condition and caregiver compassionate release.

Fourth: does filing one thing damage another? Usually not, and that surprises people. The BOP routes and the court routes run in parallel. A compassionate release denial is ordinarily without prejudice to a later motion resting on changed circumstances, though a new motion generally requires a new request to the warden — see compassionate release denial. The real exception is clemency: 28 C.F.R. § 1.3 says a commutation petition should not be filed while other judicial or administrative relief is available, absent exceptional circumstances.

Applied Insight — Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, Managing Director: The most common avoidable loss is not a denied motion. It is a family that spends eight months on a compassionate release request for someone who was already within reach of a route nobody checked — a recalculated good conduct time figure, an RDAP referral that was never made, a First Step Act credit balance the unit team had not applied, or a two-thirds date that had already passed. Those are documentary questions, answerable from the sentence computation and the PSR in an afternoon. Do that inventory first. Then build the compassionate release record, which takes months and is worth every one of them when the facts support it.

How a Compassionate Release Attorney Helps With a Federal Early Release Motion

The value of counsel on these cases is not persuasion. It is three specific things that are hard to do from inside a federal prison.

Building a record that does not yet exist. A compassionate release motion is an evidentiary filing. The judge sentenced this person years ago and knows nothing about what has happened since, so everything must be proved on paper: complete BOP health records rather than a summary, chronic-care clinic notes, consultation reports, imaging, labs, medication administration records, the Care Level assignment, Activities of Daily Living assessments, medical duty status and work restrictions. Where the ground is care not being provided, the proof is the gap itself — the referral made and never scheduled, the surgery approved and never performed. In FY2025, “insufficient proof of a serious physical or medical condition” was cited 352 times as a denial reason and “able to provide self-care in prison” 260 times (FY2025 report, Table 11). Those two lines are the entire medical fight.

Choosing the right vehicle and the right subsection. That is the whole point of this page. Eleven routes, three different decision-makers, and a Supreme Court decision of May 28, 2026 that closed the argument a great many people were told was their best one. Selecting among them is a legal judgment made against a specific record, and it is the judgment that determines whether the next eight months are productive.

Protecting the record for court while satisfying the BOP. The warden request and the court motion are governed by different rules, and one unresolved circuit split runs straight through the middle of them: whether the grounds raised with the warden must match the grounds raised in court. The Seventh Circuit says yes (Williams, 987 F.3d 700); the Fourth says no (Ferguson, 55 F.4th 262). Until that is settled, the safe course everywhere is to put every ground in the warden request. Exhaustion is not jurisdictional, but it is a mandatory claim-processing rule the government can insist on (Alam, 960 F.3d 831 (6th Cir. 2020)), and the Eighth Circuit recognizes no futility exception (Houck, 2 F.4th 1082 (8th Cir. 2021)).

It also means saying no when the answer is no. After May 2026, a case whose entire theory was the length of the sentence needs a different vehicle, and the sooner that is said, the less time is lost. Christopher Zoukis leads the firm’s federal prison consulting work — designation, sentence computation, First Step Act credits, RDAP, medical-care advocacy, and reentry planning. The legal work on any motion, including the filing, the briefing, and any appeal, is handled by Elizabeth Franklin-Best and the firm’s attorneys. For how judges weigh the discretionary step, see what do judges consider when sentencing; for how these routes interact with the 2018 statute, compassionate release first step act.

Why work with Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best is the founder and Principal Attorney of Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C., a boutique firm devoted to federal criminal appeals and post-conviction relief. Over more than 20 years she has handled more than 330 federal proceedings, over 100 of them appeals, with sixteen published decisions as counsel of record. She is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and twelve of the thirteen U.S. Courts of Appeals — every regional circuit (1st–11th) plus the D.C. Circuit — and has appeared pro hac vice in federal courts from Montana to Florida. She is recognized by Best Lawyers in America 2026 for Appellate Practice and by Chambers USA 2026 for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations, and was named South Carolina Public Defender of the Year in 2010. She is the author of Reversing Your Criminal Conviction: Develop Your Winning Strategy (2023) and serves as Board Chair of Justice 360.

Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, is the firm’s Managing Director and a nationally recognized federal prison expert. He is the author of the Federal Prison Handbook, Directory of Federal Prisons, Prison Education Guide, and College for Convicts, and serves as Chairman of the Board of the Human Rights Defense Center. He has been quoted as a federal prison expert by outlets including CNN, the Associated Press, and The Washington Post. He earned his J.D. at the University of California, Davis School of Law after serving roughly a decade in the federal Bureau of Prisons, where he became an award-winning incarcerated journalist — a combination of formal training and firsthand knowledge that few in federal defense can offer. He leads the firm’s federal prison consulting practice.

The firm runs a national federal practice on an intentionally small caseload, from offices in Columbia and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Compassionate release motions are filed in the district that imposed the sentence, wherever in the country that is.

Talk to a Federal Compassionate Release Attorney

If someone in your family is sick, aging badly, or the only person who can care for a child — or if you simply do not know which of these eleven routes applies — the useful first step is a look at the actual documents. Four of them answer most of the eligibility questions on this page:

1. The judgment and commitment order. It fixes the sentence imposed, which drives good conduct time under § 3624(b), the two-thirds calculation under the elderly pilot, and which district court hears any motion.
2. The Statement of Reasons and the presentence report. Together they show the guideline range, the criminal history points, and any weapon or role adjustment — which decides retroactive-amendment eligibility under § 1B1.10 and RDAP eligibility under 28 C.F.R. § 550.55(b) before anyone files anything.
3. The sentence computation and FSA time-credit statement. These show whether credits are being earned, applied, or quietly withheld.
4. The BOP medical file. Not the summary a family can request — the complete record, which is where a compassionate release motion is either won or lost.

Call (843) 620-1100 or schedule a consultation directly. We handle federal compassionate release motions in district courts nationwide.

Frequently Asked Questions About Compassionate Release Criteria

Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026